Hi everyone. This is about a brooch I found quite literally in a trash box. See, I own a couple of rental properties & am occasionally hired by friends who also have properties to help them get their places ready to be put back on the market. Being a diehard lover of all things junk I usually end up with anything that gets left behind & this time I found this.At first I thought it was a cheap piece of costume jewelry since as you can see from the photo it is a bit big & sparkly to possibly be the real thing. But when I got the chance to really start looking at the brooch I noticed that the back seemed to be highly tarnished & I could just make out half of a tiny hallmark ,peeking out from the dirt, stamped into it. Well with some careful spot polishing plus a borrowed jeweler's loupe,I was able to quite clearly see that the mark was a butterfly. Unfortunately I can't figure out how to photograph it, it's just too small. But I did take a poll of 10 people. I handed them the loupe & then flipped through a small lineup of similar marks. 9 identified the butterfly , 1 said he just couldn't see it well enough. Well,I had never seen that particular hallmark before.Also it was just an insect,no writing. Who used just an insect? So I started digging. From what I understand ( & please correct if me wrong) the butterfly stamp was only used by a man named Ernst Gideon Bek.
Bek it would seem was a German jewelry designer from Pforzheim Germany. He's better known for high end purses but did sell jewelry in the USA exclusively through an affiliated company called the Binder Brothers. He apprenticed at Rothacker & Kinzinger before starting his own business in 1897 with the butterfly mark. Until 1914 when WWI broke out. At that point he was declared an 'enemy trader' & all his stock, company & I believe patents & trademarks were seized. Either way the butterfly hallmark was never used again.
Now that I think I had who made it, the next question for me was "What is it made of?". Back to the Internet. This time it was quite a bit more difficult.These stones did not look like any of the usual stones, ie; ruby,diamond, or sapphire. It didn't look like Swarovski or plain crystals either. Drove me crazy until I ran across the entries for alexandrite. This description really fit these stones well. I know that is pretty much impossible to tell alexandrite from a description or a photo so I wanted to try a new kind of test. I happened to run across a website during my searching with a lot of good information about determining & viewing color change. One of the suggestions was that the best way to truly see & enjoy alexandrite's true color change is with a candle in a very dark room. That is what I am going to try to demonstrate below. I know there is no way to say whether these stones are real without going to a jeweler & that is where it is going shortly ,so no pressure. I just thought that from what I've read, that the people on this site would enjoy the story & mystery as much as I have. Please weigh in & give it your best guess. My guess is it's a nice chunk of antique synthetic alexandrite just based on sheer size but I'd love to know what ya'll think about it. & I'll update the answer from the gemologist as soon as I know.
Thank You
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_x4WlrY3oTo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If that doesn't work the link is:http://youtu.be/_x4WlrY3oTo Even though I know most people don't like links & hey I don't blame you
Bek it would seem was a German jewelry designer from Pforzheim Germany. He's better known for high end purses but did sell jewelry in the USA exclusively through an affiliated company called the Binder Brothers. He apprenticed at Rothacker & Kinzinger before starting his own business in 1897 with the butterfly mark. Until 1914 when WWI broke out. At that point he was declared an 'enemy trader' & all his stock, company & I believe patents & trademarks were seized. Either way the butterfly hallmark was never used again.
Now that I think I had who made it, the next question for me was "What is it made of?". Back to the Internet. This time it was quite a bit more difficult.These stones did not look like any of the usual stones, ie; ruby,diamond, or sapphire. It didn't look like Swarovski or plain crystals either. Drove me crazy until I ran across the entries for alexandrite. This description really fit these stones well. I know that is pretty much impossible to tell alexandrite from a description or a photo so I wanted to try a new kind of test. I happened to run across a website during my searching with a lot of good information about determining & viewing color change. One of the suggestions was that the best way to truly see & enjoy alexandrite's true color change is with a candle in a very dark room. That is what I am going to try to demonstrate below. I know there is no way to say whether these stones are real without going to a jeweler & that is where it is going shortly ,so no pressure. I just thought that from what I've read, that the people on this site would enjoy the story & mystery as much as I have. Please weigh in & give it your best guess. My guess is it's a nice chunk of antique synthetic alexandrite just based on sheer size but I'd love to know what ya'll think about it. & I'll update the answer from the gemologist as soon as I know.
Thank You
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/_x4WlrY3oTo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
If that doesn't work the link is:http://youtu.be/_x4WlrY3oTo Even though I know most people don't like links & hey I don't blame you
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